Dan Fagin and the science of Toms River

Updated October 7, 2014 at 7:23 AM;Posted October 7, 2014 at 7:00 AM

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"It was encouraging to tell this story in a deeper way, rather than just reciting events that happened in Toms River," says Dan Fagin, whose book "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation," won this year's Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
(Photo illustration by Suzanne Anan)

In 2005, Dan Fagin, an environmental journalism professor at New York University, began researching Toms River. Fagin was interested in the dumping of industrial pollution that led to increased cancer rates among local residents and the epidemiological investigations linking the two. Fagin’s book, “Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation,” was published in 2013 and has won numerous awards, including this year’s Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

1. What was your entry point to this story?

I was the environmental reporter at Newsday for many, many years and had written about cancer patterns on Long Island. But even though I did the best I could with those stories, I never felt like I was giving readers the full story. I also felt like the science being done on Long Island was more a political science than good epidemiology. So, when I heard about what was happening in Toms River and went down there to cover it briefly, I was fascinated. I thought the people were fascinating and the story was amazing — it was quite a saga. I also thought that good science was being done. I think all good storytelling rises out of some strong emotion — and in my case, it was frustration that I wasn’t giving people the information they really needed.

2. What about the reporting process? Was it a challenge to reach people who were part of this saga a decade earlier?

I’ve been a reporter long enough to know how to begin this type of deep research: read as much as you can, identify the key people, talk to them and build out your network from there. That’s what I did, starting in 2005. It was a really big piece of research, but there is no magic involved. It also required reading a lot — using the Freedom of Information Act to get documents, spending a lot of time in the Toms River library looking at the so-called wall of shame where they kept a vast amount of documentation about this.

3. There are so many layers in this book. Did there end up being more threads than you considered when you began the project?

I knew starting out that the power of the book would be its detail — to really show why this is such a tough problem for science and human beings to solve. In order to do that, you need to tell the story in detail, but also understand the story in a deep way so you can tell (it) in an interesting way. I knew from the beginning that I would want to do some historical and scientific digressions. I guess I wasn’t certain about that strategy initially. Do I want to include the history and background? But what I found was that things really fit together. It’s kind of exciting in narrative journalism when you are reporting something and find connections. Finding connections is what good nonfiction storytelling is all about. I kept seeing connections between Basel (Switzerland) and Toms River. Or between molecular epidemiology and classical epidemiology. Finding connections between the things that are happening to the families in Toms River and some of the crucial issues for cancer cluster analysis around the world. It was encouraging to tell this story in a deeper way, rather than just reciting events that happened in Toms River.

4. Does Toms River offer a lesson about a case that is bound to repeat itself in other parts of the world, or as a wholly unique incident?

That is the crucial question, isn’t it? It’s one I explore in the last chapter. As a science writer, I try to make sure that all of my assertions are backed by evidence and, when I can’t be confident about something, I say so. In this case, what I say in the last chapter is that no one can say with certainty whether Toms River is an anomaly — a kind of freak accident — or whether it is something much more systemic, emblematic of something much more pervasive. I can tell you what I think, based on the evidence I see and experts I speak to. My view is that the only thing unusual about what happened in Toms River is that we found out about it. And it was a series of freakish events that brought to life what happened — what I call the secret history of Toms River. It took some really horrendous pollution and also some really brave individual acts by citizens of Toms River, and outsiders who came in and did the right thing, and, at key moments, kept the story going and allowed the facts to come to life.

5. What then is the avenue toward avoiding these situations?

It’s really all about certainty. How sure do we have to be about something to act on it? In some parts of our lives — most, actually — we rely on imperfect information. It’s how we get through the day. The problem is when there are benefits and cost involved. That is a huge mistake. What we really need to do is learn to weigh the evidence, and assess costs and benefits as best we can. Then, realize we have to act based on imperfect evidence, because the evidence will never be perfect. That is a crucial lesson of Toms River, that we do have the ability to improve the evidence we have — to collect more evidence — but that we cannot allow uncertainty to stop us. We need to learn to act based on imperfect information.